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Prions

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Re: Prions

#61

Post by danesparza »

adrianN wrote: post #17
danesparza wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Prions almost strike me as an interesting boundary condition for stupid behavior. But if most of the world's meat supply becomes effected by prion caused diseases (think: Chronic Wasting Disease https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html ) then I think we truly might be in a tight spot.

Luckily humans can survive quite well without any meat at all.

Agreed. What 2020 has shown us is that many humans can't cope with change well. This is what would cause us to be in a tight spot (IMHO)

Re: Prions

#62

Post by marcosdumay »

im3w1l wrote: post #14

Prions are misfolded proteins. Because of mutations our proteins have tiny variations in them and it should not surprise me if some of them are more prone to misfolding than others. Currently it barely matters, but in a world rampant with prions, wouldn't we evolve more stable ones?

There's some space for prion evolution, but it's a very small set of possibilities. And more importantly, the little they can evolve, they do so at random, there is no genetic recombination step to merge the selection of unrelated features.

Re: Prions

#63

Post by nefitty »

mikeyouse wrote: post #54
virmundi wrote: post #28

[flagged]

Read the website of the author of that garbage paper and decide for yourself whether you feel like it’s a good decision to broadcast it to a wider audience: vaccines.net > We are concerned that the current outbreak of COVID-19 is actually a bioweapon attack and may be linked to the US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated from the US army base Fort Detrick. > The former FBI agent in charge of the US anthrax attack…

For additional context, the author is JB Classen. From his Wikipedia page:

> A widely-reposted 2021 Facebook post claiming that the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 could cause prion diseases was based on a paper by Classen. The paper was published in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, whose publisher, Scivision Publishers, is included in Beall's list of publishers of predatory journals. Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, described the claim as "completely wrong".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen

Re: Prions

#64

Post by danesparza »

dnautics wrote: post #59
cogman10 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of CWD? That one scares me more than current known human prion disease. Mainly because it seems to spread really easily. Other prion diseases seem to practically require cannibalism to spread.

Cwd is essentially the same as bse and cjd and scrapie. It's actually the one that you have to worry about the least. For unknown reasons, there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans (I was briefly investigating the molecular mechanisms for this but finished my phd before getting results). As for why the grazing animals can spread prion, my guess is that the prion protein is highly concentrated i…

Wait, wait, wait. Your advice seems contradictory: "there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans"

and

"Incidentally, you probably shouldn't eat beef tongue."

Can you clarify?

Re: Prions

#66

Post by giantg2 »

CountDrewku wrote: post #50
cogman10 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of CWD? That one scares me more than current known human prion disease. Mainly because it seems to spread really easily. Other prion diseases seem to practically require cannibalism to spread.

CWD hasn't jumped to humans ever, correct?

They don't really know, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't, or at least hasn't yet. There have been a few studies following up on groups of people who consumed CWD positive deer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie...

Re: Prions

#67

Post by whatshisface »

xenadu02 wrote: post #44
incrudible wrote: post #16

I remember that in the 90s, when "mad cow disease" was dominating the headlines, it was predicted that there would be an exponential increase in cases, decades down the line. The same point about prions being virtually indestructible was being made, the same concerns about surgical equipment and blood donations were raised. Suffice it to say, the prion disaster did not materialize, so I'm skeptical about the same sto…

We have no idea if US Beef is infected. The USDA prohibits anyone from testing their cows and ended their spot-testing program (which was a joke). So unlike Europe we never reckoned with the problem and don't know if it is currently spreading. For human exposure we would not yet be far enough along to know if the US Beef supply either is or was contaminated. Personally I have basically stopped eating beef for this re…

>The USDA prohibits anyone from testing their cows

Huh? Why would they prohibit testing?

Re: Prions

#68

Post by ggreer »

xenadu02 wrote: post #44
incrudible wrote: post #16

I remember that in the 90s, when "mad cow disease" was dominating the headlines, it was predicted that there would be an exponential increase in cases, decades down the line. The same point about prions being virtually indestructible was being made, the same concerns about surgical equipment and blood donations were raised. Suffice it to say, the prion disaster did not materialize, so I'm skeptical about the same sto…

We have no idea if US Beef is infected. The USDA prohibits anyone from testing their cows and ended their spot-testing program (which was a joke). So unlike Europe we never reckoned with the problem and don't know if it is currently spreading. For human exposure we would not yet be far enough along to know if the US Beef supply either is or was contaminated. Personally I have basically stopped eating beef for this re…

If US beef was contaminated, wouldn’t there be thousands of cases of vCJD[1] by now?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt–Jakob_dise...

Re: Prions

#69

Post by danesparza »

CountDrewku wrote: post #50
cogman10 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of CWD? That one scares me more than current known human prion disease. Mainly because it seems to spread really easily. Other prion diseases seem to practically require cannibalism to spread.

CWD hasn't jumped to humans ever, correct?

No. But Mad Cow Disease (also caused by prions) sure did. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

Re: Prions

#70

Post by dnautics »

danesparza wrote: post #64
dnautics wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cwd is essentially the same as bse and cjd and scrapie. It's actually the one that you have to worry about the least. For unknown reasons, there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans (I was briefly investigating the molecular mechanisms for this but finished my phd before getting results). As for why the grazing animals can spread prion, my guess is that the prion protein is highly concentrated i…

Wait, wait, wait. Your advice seems contradictory: "there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans" and "Incidentally, you probably shouldn't eat beef tongue." Can you clarify?

Sorry, the grouping was unclear.

There is not deer sheep, deer cow, deer humans.

There is cow sheep, maybe cow human. I don't know off the top of my head about sheep human

If there had been, the us food supply would be trashed. Cwd is highly endemic among wild deer and wild deer co-graze with cows all the time.

Also unknown if the relationship can be transitive. There might be a species X where deer X human.

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